partial P112 kits

[A. Christoff Baumann]

On Jun 21, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Dennis Boone wrote:

>>  The proper question is "Why would
> you want to surrender the fun of installing the SMD parts?"

Because many people have difficulty soldering SMD parts, and we can have a professional robot pick-and-place the parts at a cost that is negligible for us compared to supporting people who will invariably screw that step up. Additionally, being the static-sensitive nature of the parts and their small size, it makes inventory easier for us.

And for myself, my eyesight is such that I can't even see well enough (at age 40) to solder SMD anymore on a tight board.  In the last production run, we had one or two defects, and that was difficult for me to fix: I can't imagine having to solder all the pins and doing it successfully.

Dave: I have a small number of unstuffed boards as overages from the last production run.  If people really want to do all the SMD stuff, order a few extra parts and we can package up the unstuffed boards to people who like eyestrain and/or have their own wave-soldering systems.